Minutes, Apr 20 2006

Meeting time: 08:00 AM Pacific time

Roll Call


Present: Ben, Munwar, Jodok, Alex, Jackie, Joel


Absent: Geoff


Observing: Toby, Paul



Agenda Items

1) Do we have minutes from the New Orleans meeting? Counted as official meeting but no business transacted, Joel will send minutes. Discussion about caching in 2.5 release.  Discussed Plone Conference.  No bids, discussion about what conference should be had.

2) Approve agenda.  Alex motioned, Jackie seconded. Agenda approved by acclaim.

3) Officer reports.

4) Committee reports (below).

5) Old business (below).

6) New business (below).

7) Review newly-discussed action items.

8) Set time for next meeting.


Officer Reports

President

Report during meeting.  Since last meeting, lots of teaching.

Vice-President

Nothing to report.

Secretary

Report during meeting.

Treasurer

Toby sent the board a status report on April 18 (sent to board on April 20).  Highlights:

  • Bank accounts migrated, Toby and Paul are signers
  • Most non-sensitive info uploaded to Collective, including scanned contrib agreements
  • Filed 2005 taxes and paid $600+ tax prep fee
  • Will know in 2-3 weeks if pre-Toby 2004 tax penalty is waived
  • Worked with SFLC to finish 501c3 form, awaiting Joel signature
  • Attached financials (to email)


Committee Reports


Membership Committee

Hanno gave a report with input from Godefroid.

  • As noted under New Business, a request to hold off on voting in last proposed slate, as these weren't judged by the board's membership guidelines.
  • Hanno will rewrite the guidelines with Paul providing review and guidance on "original intent" then submit to board.
  • After this clarification, restart the processing of incoming applications.
  • Hanno also fixed plone.org which was broken for incoming applications and a dead link to a bogus form.
  • Hanno will also plan for a membership renewal process via workflow this autumn, including emeritus workflow status.  Godefroid pointed out that renewal must follow approval of new guidelines.


Trademark Committee

Andrew Hatton gave a report on behalf of the committee (which includes Jodok and Xavier):

  • Alex provided a list of Plone domains
  • Action item about domains listed under New Business
  • Issue raised about use of Plone name in a commercial project. Andrew approached the company who agreed to rename the product.  A domain was also used to push the company. A request to change the domain has yet to be complied with.
  • This is also true of another firm that Andrew pinged with to no avail.  Paul has offered to add some influence.
  • Does the foundation need to have an established address in Europe? A condition for registering domain name in Europe (at least in some countries - like Italy) is to have an effective seat in Europe. (Effective means:  telephone number, legal address and a representative that can sign papers).
  • How much effort should we put into chasing the “url” infringements? I see these as less serious than clear infringements of the Plone name itself. Do we need to get our legal team involved?

Marketing Committee

Jackie had to deal with a non-work emergency situation which is now resolved.  Her next steps:

  • Get with Paul to find status on projects
  • Connect with AlecM on timing for release marketing
  • Email a plan of action (nee, a plone of action [wink]) to the Plone marketing list

Joel mentioned discussion about Plone 2.5 and the addition of CacheFu as something to make marketing for the release easier.


Fundraising

Munwar and Paul agreed that fundraising should join with plone.net, as attempts to stir interest on general fundraising aren't working.  Motion: Close fundraising committee and join plone.net as Plone Foundation sponsorship.  Munwar and Paul are in discussion to give the board a proposal.


Ad hoc group: Funding Press Releases

This group is now closed, as its business has concluded.

Plone.net

Aka the "It only looks dead" project.  Paul spent 3 IRC days a month ago working with David Bain to take over the reports.  Paul and David resumed last week and this week.  Jean Jordan has also volunteered to help.  Limi has picked up some UI issues as well.  Prior to that, Abstract Edge generously provided an HTML design which Alex converted into a skin (and a tutorial).  Joel was extremely helpful in making all the content types and software.  Alas, we have an equal number of volunteers that don't answer mail.

Current status: It is ok for collecting data, but not ok for showing data.  Thus, kind of an awkward, in-between situation.

Next milestone: I cleaned up the Trac this week and made an M3, slated for next Tuesday.  The list of issues is organized by critical (none currently), meaning it prevents the software from working, major (meaning it will disgust the target audience), and minor (we can live without it).  Each person with assigned issues is expected to either finish them for the M3 date or let me know.

Coming up...Munwar and Paul are going to make a proposal for how revenue generation will work.


Old Business


  1. (Munwar) Plone Fundraising idea - "Plone Foundation Sponsor Members".  Shall we invite members for $2000+ per year sponsorship?  I already sent you all a detailed mail about this earlier (referring to Python Software Foundation).  Closed, superceded by new business.
  2. (Munwar) Define scope of activities for "Fundraising committee".  What should we do and most important what we should never do.  Closed, superceded by new business.
  3. (Alex) Get the board's blessing to spend some money to promote Plone at the Boston LinuxWorld (Nate has already volunteered to head up the organization for it) - LinuxWorld Boston is over, but we should talk about LinuxWorld SF.


New Business


  1. (Paul) Motion to improve efficiency with Toby by giving Paul signature authority. Joel made a motion that Paul and Toby are able to sign financial and legal stuff for foundation.  Ben seconded.  Roll call: Ben +1, Munwar +1, Jodok +1, Alex +1, Jackie +1, Joel +1.
  2. (Paul) Discuss Plone conference situation.  Joel pinged previous bidders, no luck.  2 groups interested, one a strong choice.  We will table this and get more info from the interested party.
  3. (Munwar) Status report on plone.net. (Complete: see note above)
  4. (Paul) plone.org Amaze logo discussion and vote.  Jackie asked if this was about plone.org only or also plone.net. Alex gave some background on Jackie's questions.  Jackie will convene an ad-hoc group for how to handle this issue and policy for the future.
  5. (Alex) Google's Summer of Code sponsorships. Framework team and list of tasks.  Deadline end of the month.  Jodok has volunteered to coordinate this with the framework team, as the framework team didn't respond to Alex.
  6. (Alex) Planning for representing Plone at conferences. $1k for some stuff at next LinuxWorld.
  7. (Paul) Retract slate of proposed members.  Paul will tell Godefroid and Hanno.
  8. (Geoff) Update on zope.org discussion.  On Apr 19 Geoff sent the board a note with the status on the zope.org discussions.  He is looking for help on how to contact the Zope Foundation for guidance.
  9. (Munwar) Vote to close fundraising committee.

  10. (Andrew Hatton) Do we want to have a “core” of domains managed centrally by the Foundation, eg:

    • Plone.org
    • Plone.com
    • Plone.net

    ...and then the rest managed by volunteers within the countries. Or do we want all top level country domains also managed centrally. If we want to manage them centrally, then we need to approve an agency to help us do this.  I think this would cost approx 1k per annum, to manage the complete list of domains.

    Toby pointed out that plone.net registration came in, Alan said to renew, but it would be better to have central admin and oversight.  Alex mentioned discussions with volunteers.  Jackie mentioned doing it as a trial for a year.

    Joel said to get a proposal from the trademark committee.

  11. (Andrew Hatton) Motion: "Agreement to pay expenses (approx $1K for registration of Plone as a trademark in China) to Zea.  Xavier expects the final registration bill to be at least this.  We need to be prepared for the registration to fail, and thus for the costs to be sunk.  Hopefully this won't happen, but it's a possibility. The trademark committee recommendation is to proceed and pay the expense.

    Joel felt that it was a non-strategic expense with risk of failure or cost increase.  Toby felt that was a low cost estimate that could easily go up.  Alex felt that such registrations were indeed part of the PF mission and thus strategic.

    Jodok made a motion for the PF to invest $1k, cap of $1.5k, to do this registration in China. Ben +1, Munwar +1, Jodok +1, Alex +1, Jackie +1, Joel -1.

Action Items

  1. (Alex) Public offer about booths at conferences.
  2. (Jackie) Launch the ad-hoc committee for the logo issue.
  3. (Jodok) Contact framework team about Summer of Code.


Next Meeting


May 4, same time.